At first I thought [The Connection] was pretending to watch its own gestation so that we should feel like we're in the actual pad, man. But this pseudo-Pirandellism is self-defeating. The screen is a place of the mind and the spectator is present "in" any film from the moment he starts caring what will happen next. All aesthetic hoopdedoo meant to convince us we are not in a cinema only reminds us we are; and the equivalent of a play which admits it is a play in a theatre, is a film which admits it is a film in a cinema, that is, either a filmed interview, or (in this case) a film about an intelligent director making the honest film which we see. A film about another film creates no more illusion of reality than a film about a stageshow, and only cramps and flattens the inner...